Friday, April 24, 2009

1. Yesterday suicide bombers killed eighty Iraqis in three separate attacks. Today at least sixty more residents of Baghdad have died in two suicide bombings. It's stating the obvious to say that this raises concerns that progress on the security front is being undermined. So far, nobody really seems to understand what's prompted the new attacks.

2. Pakistan's Taliban insurgency is worsening. Fighters from neighboring Swat moved into the Buner district earlier this week, only seventy miles from the capital of Pakistan Islamabad. The Pakistani government responded by sending police forces to the district, who were promptly repelled by the militants, and other reports indicate that Taliban forces have moved into districts even closer to the capitol. Al Jazeera reports that the Taliban are now pulling their fighters out of Buner, but none of this encourages American officials to believe that Pakistan is capable of dealing with their home grown Taliban insurgency...or securing their nuclear weapons against those fighters.

3. The Washington Post reports that the debate within the Obama administration over whether to release four OLC memos was intense. One of the arguments against releasing them was surely the political furor that the move has provoked. The Obama administration says they intend to oppose any investigation in torture by Congress, a move that some Democratic members are pushing for.

4. The Jane Harman story grows even more troubling with the revelation that then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales intervened to prevent then director of the CIA Porter Goss from informing members of Congress that one of their own had been captured on an NSA wiretap speaking with an agent of Israeli government, and that Gonzales also intervened to quash any investigation of the matter by the FBI. All of this was done allegeldy so the administration could continue to count on Harman's help in protecting the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program (and on that score, Harman didn't disappoint.) My only question is...how long do we have to wait to get rid of her?